


we are in this together

by sbj



Category: Powerpuff Girls
Genre: Drabble Collection, Explicit Language, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Gen Work, Het, Mild Sexual Content, Post-Break Up, Romance, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 17,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27403429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sbj/pseuds/sbj
Summary: a series of ficlets (too long to be drabbles, really). mostly ppg/rrb with a smidge of gen thrown in. largely requests x-posted from my dreamwidth. from 2019-2020. tags will be updated as each ficlet is posted.
Relationships: Brick/Blossom, Buttercup/Butch, Greens, Reds - Relationship
Comments: 86
Kudos: 246





	1. erosion

**Author's Note:**

> from may 2019. bassy on dw requested Greens making out.

Buttercup thinks Butch is the embodiment of the word _sharp_.

Not in the figurative sense. Not in reference to his mind. Literally, physically sharp. How else to explain the marks that crawl to the surface of her skin after a fight, bruises like badges and medals? The ocean throws itself on the jagged, rocky shore, and does it over and over again. That resilience is something to celebrate.

He’s all angles and hard edges, elbows and knees, a smile like a razor on her tongue. She gives as good as she gets. Sometimes better. Sometimes good enough to feel the serrated teeth of his body soften against hers.

Erosion is a process, so slow she doesn’t even realize it’s happening.

The medals disappear entirely, as does the glory they used to bring her, disintegrating into something unrecognizable, unfamiliar. An entire ocean, pulling back.

Those angles and hard edges remain—a ghost of what they once were, but still there. Her hands graze it all, carefully, gently, trying not to get cut.

The blade of Butch’s smirk disappears and a hard breath passes between them. The growl in his throat dissolves into a sigh, a breath that shudders, soft as a wave hitting shore. And all that unspoken power behind it.

She throws herself on the sharpness of him—his edges and angles and corners—and marvels as it all melts underneath her as she pulls him out to sea.


	2. sign

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from june 2019. roseshower on dw requested a Greens kissing competition. (racketballz on tumblr/shdowthehedge on twitter did fanart for it if you go digging!)
> 
> cw: language (sexist slur used by both in casual conversation)

“You would _not_.”

“I one-hundred-and-fifty-fucking percent _would_ ,” Butch asserted.

A sharp, derisive “Ha!” exploded out of Buttercup’s mouth, silencing the crickets that had been scoring their late walk home. The night had been a winner, filled with bad movies and good friends, the kind of night that delayed your ‘Goodbyes’ until the last possible moment. One by one the rest of the gang had been picked off, leaving Buttercup and Butch to wander a de-populated Townsville Park, eerie and magical in its dedication to silence.

Not ones for peace, they were happy to break that stillness with their own conversation. They never ran out of things to talk about, anyway. And arguing was a _kind_ of talking.

“You have no willpower!” Buttercup’s voice lifted at the end, paralleling the upward curve of her mouth. “As soon as someone’s mouth touched yours, you’d go full slut on them!”

“Don’t slut-shame me,” Butch said. “And don’t underestimate my innate, primal need to win at everything.”

Buttercup scoffed. “Your needs are out of touch with reality.”

“I bet I’d last longer than you,” he reiterated, which was the same dumb statement that had gotten them on this dumb argument. Dumb dumb dumb.

“No, you wouldn’t, see, because _I_ have hangups. _I_ don’t like being touched.”

“But you’d still _react_. You’d punch ‘em. Instantly.”

“Not wrong,” she allowed.

“And it’s about not doing _anything_. I could absolutely stand there stock still while someone was macking on me and do nothing. Not even kiss them. Or punch them.”

“You wouldn’t punch ‘em.”

“Depends on who’s kissing me. And I’d _definitely_ outlast you.”

She shook her head in disbelief.

“We should find someone to test this theory on,” he said, because he was stupid enough to believe this was within the realm of possibility.

“It’s nearly two in the morning. No one here but us. And probably some drunk people.”

“Well, I don’t want to kiss a drunk person.”

Buttercup’s throat caught, and then she realized he had been making a simple statement and not attempting to flirt. Which he still did, occasionally. Not as often these days. Not that she was keeping track.

Townsville was quiet and full of magic tonight. The crickets had started singing to them again. The darkness made her brave.

“Alright then,” she said, and she sensed him tensing because he knew her voice, and her voice had taken on a different color. “Let’s test it.”

“Huh?”

She pulled out her phone and opened up her clock app, wondering if the glow from the screen cast enough light on her face to reveal a blush. “I’ll kiss you, and time you. Let’s see how long you can keep still.”

“Are _you_ drunk? I said I didn’t want to kiss a drunk person.”

She thought of saying something, but knew that if she did, they’d just fall back into their usual banter, and the opportunity would quietly slip away, the same way the flirting had. She stayed silent, waiting for the night to work its magic.

“Ugh.” He groaned, the pitch of his voice in perfect harmony with the cricketsong. “Fine.”

***

He wasn’t much taller than her, but she still floated up to meet him.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Thank God we were chewing gum,” he said, eyes elsewhere, a part of him still trying to pull her into conversation. She ignored him.

 _Here goes nothing_ , she thought. _Or everything_.

She pressed close, her eyelids fluttering shut as she stabbed at the _Start_ button on her phone.

She was glad that she’d had practice, that she’d had a boyfriend once, that she’d given in to curiosity as a sullen middle schooler and permitted herself a couple of games of Spin the Bottle. She did not want Butch to think she was a bad kisser. In this, she knew she had a leg up on him. While he wasn’t exactly a stranger to kissing, she’d borne witness to enough of his encounters to know he went in too hungry, too desperate to be liked, or remembered. An earnest kiss had its charm, but Buttercup had developed _technique_.

She started chaste, shy, with just enough pressure to feel the fullness of his stone-still lips against her own, then instantly pulled it back. She let her lips skim his—first his lower lip, then the upper. She lingered, taking advantage of the occasion to create a map in her mind, each rise, each dip. A small kiss at the center of his lower lip. Just a taste.

Slow, slow, slow.

Her teeth appeared, grazing the areas her lips had just ghosted over. Still a light touch. She felt his Adam’s apple bob and realized her free hand had drifted up to his neck. This was a part of it, too. She let her hand wander around, brushing the hair at the nape of his neck.

More small kisses, one for each corner of his mouth. She thought of saying something, of congratulating him—aside from his swallow, he hadn’t budged—but didn’t trust her brain to say something that was flirty enough, that communicated the message she wanted. Her brain was an unknowable beast, but her body, she knew. She knew how hard she could hit, and, conversely, how soft.

She drew his lip—the lower, again—between hers, pulling gently at the fullness of it, of him. Oh, how full he made her. A paradox. How stupidly full and hungry. She thought of him kissing other girls, how plain it was to see that he thought of kisses as a signature, and if he went in hard enough, his name would emboss itself onto them permanently and he’d never be overlooked or forgotten again. He wasn’t wrong. This was a sort of signature.

The pressure she’d let him have a sip of at the beginning returned, and she tangled her hand in his hair, trapping him as she parted her lips against his and her phone dropped to the grass. Butch tasted like her gum and magic, like a boy who was going to lose a game that had never mattered in the first place. 

He made a noise against her that felt like sunlight blooming in her chest. The orchestra of crickets swelled. Butch’s mouth parted for her, her, her, and she felt so full and hungry, all at once, and signed her name.


	3. celestial navigation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from july 2019. blue_aurora on dw requested TEF!Greens fluff. not truly TEF!Greens; i wanted to avoid writing them as teens again so i decided to tackle an adult version of what could be considered their TEF!versions.
> 
> (TEF meaning More Than Human.)

“I thought I heard something up here.”

Butch blinked his eyes open, his vision fuzzing briefly before pulling Buttercup into focus. He grinned and managed, “Hey.” Then, after a moment, “Cute apron. Is that an order?”

“Shut up,” she said, the _Kiss the Cook_ message emblazoned across it warping as she leaned in to inspect his injuries. He shifted, loosening a few shingles. “You’re fucking up my roof.”

He responded by picking up a shingle and tossing it onto the ground. “Oops.”

“Asshole. What happened to you? Or who?”

“Jealous?” He brushed a hand along the bruises on his face for emphasis, suppressing a wince.

She groaned and stood up, her silhouette striking a pretty chord against the sunset. “My family’s here.”

“For dinner? Yeah, I saw their cars in the driveway.”

“I can’t bring you in.”

He suppressed another wince. “Wasn’t planning on coming in.”

She stared a second, then sighed. “I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. He shifted his legs; he couldn’t find a position that felt comfortable. “The X can handle it.”

“Seriously, what happened?”

“Go take care of your family.”

She stared a while longer. Butch closed his eyes. By the time he opened them again, she’d disappeared.

***

The next time he opened his eyes night had finished claiming the world and stars had been poured across the sky.

“Can’t believe you fell asleep up here.”

He looked to his right side, where Buttercup sat, carving chunks out of a peeled apple. She speared one with her paring knife and held it out to him; he grabbed it with his mouth.

“Fank you.”

“There’s dinner inside if you’re hungry.”

“What about your family?”

“They’re gone. It’s late.” She offered him another chunk. He took this one, too. “Why’d you come here?”

He swallowed and looked at her, moonlight outlining the profile of her face. “I like it here.”

“So why didn’t you come inside?”

“I told you, I saw their cars in the driveway.”

She scoffed and tossed him the last bit of apple. It bounced off his cheek and rolled down the roof.

“Shit aim.”

“Shit catch.” She tossed the apple core into her neighbor’s yard and lifted herself off the rooftop to float over him. “Let me see your face.”

It didn’t feel nearly as sore as it had earlier. He figured the bruises had to have faded by now. Even so, she straddled his stomach and let her hands ghost along his face, leaving his skin blazing in her wake.

“Come here,” he said, his hands inching up her thighs.

“Not now,” she said, but with a quiet affection that struck like a match in his chest.

“Please?” he whispered, and she paused, her eyes pulling to his.

She suddenly leaned in, and he closed his eyes and tilted his chin up to meet her open mouth with his. They kissed until he reached for the waist of her pants and she pushed herself off to lay next to him.

“We’re not fucking on my roof,” she said, a little breathless.

He curled into her side, his cheek settling on her shoulder. “We should put it to a vote.”

“House wins,” she said, and pulled him closer. “I told Bubbles.”

A little shot of something he couldn’t place ricocheted into him.

“But just Bubbles for now. I gotta… work up to the others.”

“You didn’t have to,” he said, his arm crawling along her midsection.

She stayed quiet.

“Did she get you the apron?”

Buttercup laughed. “How’d you guess?”

Quiet settled into the space surrounding them. They shifted closer, so it couldn’t squeeze into the spaces in between.

“I like it here,” he murmured, hypnotized by how his voice seemed to reverberate in her chest.

She brushed her lips against his forehead. “If you like it so much, you should move in.”

Another shot, right through him. He blinked in disbelief, his arms tightening involuntarily around her.

Her cell buzzed and they both jerked their heads toward it. Not its usual ring.

“Fucking hell,” he said, and pulled away so she could check it.

She swore under her breath. “Yeah, it’s my zone. I gotta go.” She floated up, dusting off her pants. “Hey. Go inside and eat your dinner. You need something in you.”

“ _You_ need something in _you_.”

“You’re a fucking riot. Go get cleaned up and eat and we’ll talk about it.”

“Ooh, sexy.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. Fuck, she was adorable. How could an adult woman be so fucking adorable?

Butch wanted to tell her so, but she took off before he could. He watched her sail away, one green star glittering. He sat up and crooked his arms across his knees as he waited for her to come home.


	4. lorca

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from nov 2019. sluggie on dw requested Brick and "a new forming obsession of something or someone and the way he handles it." not happy. originally posted on dw as "the remembrance."

The puppy is an impulse buy.

Brick carries it in through the front door like any other item he grabbed at the store — under his arm — while balancing the crate stuffed with dumb puppy accessories in his other hand.

He sets it down and it immediately pees on his floor.

“Cool,” he says flatly, because it isn’t the worst thing that’s happened to him today.

***

He names the puppy Lorca, inspired by the book of poetry he set down and never again picked up on the day he got him.

Lorca is a ball of energy that chews up baseboards, barks at its toys, and spends a long week completely out of touch with whatever house training is supposed to be. Eventually Brick gets sick of cleaning up after it and reads five different articles about crate training.

Turns out Lorca is also smart. He takes to the training and is saving his business for the grass within a couple of days.

“That was easy,” Brick says, and decides to work on the baseboard chewing next.

***

Lorca transforms from a fluffy little ball of hellspawn into a sleek monster of a dog whose head comes up to Brick’s hips in a matter of months. Lorca’s skull seems to fill Brick’s palm and he imagines how big the brain underneath it must be. It crosses his mind every time he teaches Lorca a new trick to pass the endless hours that stretch his gray days.

“Lorca,” he says, and the dog is immediately sitting at his side, Brick’s inflection all the indication the dog needs.

“Good dog,” he says, a tug at his lips as he scratches Lorca’s huge, brainy skull.

***

There’s a park nearby that they frequent. Brick likes to take Lorca there before it’s even light. They run into fewer people that way. The one major drawback to Lorca’s beauty is everyone sees it as an invitation to engage in conversation.

Brick likes to work on his focus there. He makes Lorca sit while he flies off, putting some distance between them, often drifting out of sight. His superhearing picks up on Lorca’s whining, itself quiet and subdued.

By the time Brick calls out to him, he can tell the dog is practically vibrating with desperation for the command. He hears Lorca bolt, tearing around hills and through bushes until Brick is within sight.

Lorca circles him when he finds him, tail swishing into a blur as he whines with relief, and noses Brick’s hand incessantly.

The dog’s devotion makes Brick feel a way he can’t voice. If he never called for Lorca, he imagines the dog would just continue to sit there, wasting away until summoned.

“You’re pathetic,” he whispers, no malice behind the words. Lorca pushes his face into Brick’s hand and demands scritches.

***

Lorca gives him structure. There’s three five-mile walks a day. There’s playtime. There’s training. There’s feeding and naps. He’s a high-maintenance dog. Not that Brick is unfamiliar with the concept.

Brick only really leaves the house to keep Lorca used to the idea that sometimes he has to deal with his owner being gone; Lorca used to howl like crazy as soon as Brick grabbed his keys. Now he just settles on his rug with a treat when Brick heads out.

If he weren’t trying to maintain this level of non-anxiety, Brick’s not sure he’d go anywhere. But it’s good for Lorca. The structure. It’s good for Brick, too. It’s been a long time since he inadvertently gave up the criminal aspect of his life. Now it’s the risk of confrontation that keeps him from going back.

_Besides, what else would I do with myself?_ Brick thinks, his eyes darting ever to the clock on his phone as he’s out buying groceries.

***

“Whatever.” Brick stares into the distance at the city lights peppering the night skyline, knowing that if he were to glare at Butch for bringing her up, his brother would read too much into it. Bored nonchalance sells the statement more.

_This is what I get for going outside. This is what I get for interacting with people._

He can sense his brothers exchanging a glance and grits his teeth. At least his idiot brother had the decency to bring it up at the end of the night. He polishes off his drink and stands.

“I gotta go.”

“Already?” Butch says.

“It’s not even ten!” Boomer cries.

“I gotta walk the dog.” It’s precisely why Brick didn’t bring Lorca, even though they purposely picked a place with an outdoor patio, even though it’s dog friendly. That’s the other great thing – Lorca gives him an easy out when he’s done _being_ out.

“Later,” he says, and it could mean weeks, months, years. However long it takes for them to reach out again, because Christ knows Brick isn’t going to be the one to do it.

Five miles with Lorca that night turns into ten. Lorca crashes when they get home at half past midnight. Brick finds the book that served as his dog’s namesake, takes it outside, and hurls it into the night sky, hoping he’s thrown it hard enough to ignite on its way through the atmosphere.

***

One morning he sees her.

Lorca has gone on ahead, off-leash. They’re at the tail end of their park walk and the sun is just barely starting to break through the clouds. Brick floats up the hill that Lorca just crested and, before he gets a good look at the person Lorca is greeting, whistles for him.

Lorca automatically retreats to his owner, and the woman stands, tucking her hair back. The movement is so familiar that it seems to shoot through Brick’s chest, up to his throat. He freezes as Lorca circles him, nudging his hand.

“Brick?” Blossom says, and the sound of his name in her voice feels like a bomb has gone off inside him. “Oh my God. Brick. Hi.”

“Hey,” he manages. His own voice sounds scratchy from disuse. Even the word sounds alien and foreign to him now. She’s coming closer to him and he can’t quite believe this is happening.

“He’s yours?” she says, nodding at Lorca as she stops. Close enough to converse comfortably, but not close enough to touch.

“Yeah.”

“He’s beautiful,” she says, extending her hand, and Lorca sticks out his nose for a polite touch. “What’s his name?”

“Lorca,” he says, because he’s not thinking straight, and as soon as he says it he mentally curses himself for forgetting, for mentioning it like an idiot, most of all for daring to feel anything at the idea that she might remember her last gift to him.

“How old?”

“Five.”

Her eyes soften, and he realizes to say so was another mistake. The timeframe is significant. He wishes she hadn’t asked. There’s a bubble of air in his throat that he can’t swallow down and she’s looking at him and he wasn’t prepared for people today, much less her.

“He’s beautiful,” she says again. “You’re taking good care of him.”

Brick is overcome, suddenly, with the urge to tell her _No_ , that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, that it’s just because Lorca is smart, and his brain is big, and the training Brick had to do was minimal, but then he thinks of all the things he’s taught Lorca to do, how Lorca is on a prescription food, how even though Brick brushes him daily he still fills a brush three times over every time. He thinks of telling Blossom this, and then he thinks of telling her something he’s never told anyone, about how three years ago Lorca didn’t eat for days and Brick had to fly him to an emergency vet and it turned out Lorca’s creatnine levels were off the charts for a dog his age, like there was absolutely no reason a healthy young dog would have kidney problems of all things, and they had to keep Lorca there overnight and Brick was in the waiting room the entire time not-sleeping because the thought of Lorca dying coupled with the thought of being alone in their apartment made him want to—

“You look well,” she says, and it’s so painfully polite that he can’t bring himself to tell her, after all.

“You, too,” he says, scratching Lorca behind the ears and not looking at her.

She lingers. All he can think about is how time made no difference, how unfair it is that he can still feel this awful, can still feel so much. He keeps scratching Lorca, and Lorca shakes his head; Brick’s been focusing on one spot for too long and he thinks _Sorry._

“I’ll see you around,” Blossom says, and Brick exhales quietly, a flood of emotions hitting him that he can’t quite parse through.

He just nods. When she takes off he watches her go, his Lorca-scratching hand going limp at his side. He can feel his entire self buzzing, vibrating as he watches her leave him. A sudden desperation for her to turn around, to look at him, to say his name again, wells up inside him, and even though he knows how pointless it is to stand here and wait for something that will never again happen he stays anyway.

Lorca circles his owner, nosing at his hand and whining. Brick doesn’t move. So Lorca simply sits next to him and waits for the command.


	5. dust to dust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from nov 2019. otakuspirit on dw requested "TEF!Reds on a school trip end up getting separated from the group and have to spend a night in a motel room together." note that this is not part of TEF!canon and basically assumes the reds have had no significant interaction (certainly not romantically-inclined interaction) between where TEF is currently at (ch11) and the timeline of this ficlet.
> 
> longer notes on this one as well as song recs & lengthy initial passes that were much more maudlin can be found on my dw under the tag "totally fucking rejected."

Cell reception up here was hell, especially with the storm raging, but she was able to get Buttercup and Bubbles on the landline. Her sisters had stayed with the bus and gotten everybody to safety before the worst of the mudslide hit. 

“Guess we’re taking a literal raincheck on that camping trip,” Buttercup said. “How are you guys doing?”

Blossom rummaged through the drawers, looking for some stationery or something to write a Thank You to the front desk. They had rescued the woman who owned the place from getting swept down the mountain and in return she’d offered them a couple of rooms for the night. The weather being what it was, they had taken her up on the offer.

“I’m okay. Brick got a little beat up.”

“By you or nature?”

Blossom obliged her sister a laugh. “Nature,” she said, and shut the nightstand drawer, blushing. Someone had left a couple of condoms underneath the Bible.

“Divine intervention, then,” Buttercup said. Thunder cracked outside, and the lightning caused the room to flicker. “Did you guys hear that where you’re at?”

“Yeah. I better take a shower before it blacks out.”

“Talk in the morning?”

“Mmm.” Blossom had located a notepad and a working pen. “Yeah.”

She hung up. Now that the conversation was over, she could hear Brick showering in his room next door. The walls were thin and she couldn’t help herself.

 _Maybe I’ll wait on that shower_ , she thought, and scribbled a note of gratitude to their rescuee-cum-rescuer.

***

Brick being next door was distracting. 

After cleaning up she had dimmed the lights and tried to go to bed. Despite the intensity of the storm, the sound of rain soothed her, and she had imagined sleep would come easily.

Instead she sat curled up at the head of the bed, hugging a pillow to her chest as she leaned against the fake headboard panel, and wondered if he was asleep. 

_I’m pathetic. And a bit of a stalker._

Blossom shook her head. She needed to work on more positive self-talk.

 _Maybe he’s doing the same_. It was an idea, him sitting at the headboard himself, trying not to listen to what she was doing on her side. She wondered if he read at night; if he did, what kind of books he might read. Fiction or non? What genre? Poetry, maybe? Or something pulpy and lowbrow to help him relax?

Tonight’s rain was a torrential spring downpour, power-washing the earth clean. Summer was coming. Blossom had already been fitted for her graduation gown.

She hugged her knees a little tighter to her chest and let her gaze wander around the room. It was an old-fashioned motel, complete with faux finish wallpaper, a dark red carpet marred by the occasional bubble, and an unobtrusive watercolor painting of a sailboat.

‘Old-fashioned’ didn’t just refer to the décor. It was fitted with doors between adjoining rooms for families, and it was here where her eyes rested, here where they were riveted to the door connecting her room to Brick’s.

 _It’ll be locked_ , she thought, even as she floated toward it. She glanced down at what she was wearing—an old shirt from a dance competition, way oversized so it covered the important bits.

_And flattering underwear, thank God._

She shook her head and blushed.

_It’ll be locked._

She reached for the doorknob.

_Locked. Definitely locked. Locked. Locked. Locked._

It clicked open.

***

Brick had fallen asleep on top of the covers in what looked like sleep clothes. The shirt and pants were different from what he’d been wearing when the mud had overwhelmed him earlier in the evening.

She sat next to him, folding her legs daintily underneath her. He had his back to her and there was only his ubiquitous cap on the nightstand, no book. It occurred to her he probably hadn’t brought anything along to read anyway.

There was no thunder or lightning now, just the steady pulse of the rain as it drummed against the roof. Blossom leaned carefully over him and thought it wholly unfair that Brick wasn’t drooling or snoring or doing anything else that would deter someone who kinda-sorta had a crush on him from kinda-sorta crushing on him. The ever-furrowed brow was there, but sleep had softened its line, and with his mouth only gently parted instead of set in a scowl the question of why she bothered liking him at all seemed only a faint protest.

She sank fully onto the bed, an arm’s length away from touching him. When she first came in she had thought she might just try to talk to him. Just chatting, or closure, whatever. But here he was asleep and now she just didn’t want to leave.

 _Just a little longer_ , she thought. Then she’d go back. Definitely.

***

Brick woke up and panicked. It was a restrained panic, one that didn’t involve flailing or movement of any sort, really, and it didn’t rouse Blossom from slumber.

But he definitely panicked.

At some point he must’ve hit a lull in his sleep cycle, and whatever counted for his sixth sense had told him something about the room was off. He had blinked his eyes groggily open, slowly realized there was deep breathing in the room that wasn’t his own, and turned just enough to catch the curve of a hip and a shock of red-orange hair in his peripheral before jerking back to his side of the bed.

 _My side?_ he thought. This entire bed was technically his.

Something was in his throat now. He hoped the steady patter of the rain outside did enough to mask the sudden shortness of his breath.

_What is she doing here?_

This was definitely his room. He had remembered falling asleep facing his deadbolted door and the window that immediately opened on the parking lot. He chanced another glance behind him. There was a connecting door that stood ajar. He had thought about locking it after his shower.

_Why didn’t you?_

He avoided looking at her and turned away again. Maybe he should get up. Go next door. Sleep in her bed.

She rustled a bit in her sleep and a jolt skated across every nerve in his body. The heavy breathing resumed. He counted an agonizing thirty seconds, then exhaled, his breath feeling like static in his throat.

_Still asleep._

He stared at his front door, imagining what she must look like. _Hopefully awful and unflattering_ , he thought, but it was edgeless, without bite.

A touch at his back. He blinked, confused, then stiffened, the jolt back again, now rolling across the entire surface area of his skin as Blossom drew herself up against him.

_Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no._

He felt the warmth of her breath through his shirt as she brushed her lips against the fabric and he frantically wondered how it was possible that she could not sense his heart hammering in his chest, how the severity of its vibrations could not wake her. He felt her lips move.

“Why did you break up with me?”

The heart that had seemed so intent on drumming itself out of existence a second ago stopped. He might have thought it sleep-talk, but there was emotion behind it, a weightiness to it that couldn’t have permeated the miasma of sleep.

Here the rain seemed a curtain, the steadiness of its rhythm masking all other sounds. Brick stared at the light dancing behind the blinds. He took in a breath.

“We weren’t exactly going out,” he murmured.

She gasped and jerked away from him, scooting back to the far edge of her side.

“Oh my God, I had no—were you awake this whole time?”

“No. Just now.” He scratched at his pillowcase and thought about turning over but didn’t. “What are you doing here?”

He heard her shift on the coverlet. “I just… thought I would talk to you. Originally.”

His first instinct was to pick her apart. If talking had been so important, why sneak through the connecting door; why lie next to him instead of shaking him awake; why now, with the end of the year and, in turn, his departure from Townsville and her life approaching?

He didn’t act on instinct, though. The rain did something to it, something hypnotic and deadening and somber.

“About what?” he said, so quietly that he was sure even with the superhearing she’d have to strain to hear him.

A long moment passed before the weight on the coverlet shifted again. He sensed her coming closer, and then his chest was vibrating again, his heartbeat escalating to a feverish pitch as he felt her hand gently alight once more on his back, followed not by her lips this time, but her forehead. She ran her hand up and down his spine, an almost-caress. He wanted to ask her again, to press her for an answer, but her touch felt like heaven, sent him reeling, and he realized whatever she had to say would pale in comparison to this simple, physical act of—what was this? Loneliness? Affection? Both things, all at once?

“Do you,” she started, and then the pressure of her forehead against his back increased. “Do you have to go?”

The childishness of her voice upended him, the rain louder and more intense than before, and he turned, saying “I,” before he knew what would follow after.

But no words followed after. He rolled towards her, his gaze gliding across the shimmering light behind the blinds, the pockmarked popcorn ceiling, that familiar and agonizing dome of red-orange hair before she eclipsed it all and caught his mouth in hers.

***

There was that frozen, endless moment of pressure, a valve straining for relief. Blossom closed her eyes against Brick’s stunned face and parted his lips with hers to release it.

Controlled chaos, then. Their hands fumbling for the other’s, then in each other’s hair, twisting and pulling. Her mouth became a weapon, a blade against his that he met thrust for thrust. His breath hadn’t yet taken on the sourness of sleep, instead it tasted like the motel’s cheap mouthwash, sweet and sharp, and she tried so hard to breathe it into her, to pull the entirety of his self into her, an infection that she would let invade her body and being, that she could house forever, like a parasite.

Because that was what this was, wasn’t it? This feeling for him had burrowed into her heart, a metaphoric micropredator setting up residence inside her and gnawing bits and pieces of herself while she withered away, none the wiser. It had left her so hungry and weak but it was familiar to her now, a known entity, and now she could not imagine functioning without it.

And better a parasite than a ghost. She did not believe in ghosts. She refused to let this one haunt her.

They kissed each other until the sensation of doing so escalated to a dreamy numbness and the sound of the rain returned, the too-smooth feel of the motel’s coverlet cooling their heated skin. Blossom tangled her hands in Brick’s hair and brushed the nape of his neck, reeling from the fact that she could be allowed to touch such an intimate place, to stay her hand there and feel wanted and known.

Her own hair had gotten in the way, some of it caught in her mouth, and he swiped at it now, gently brushing it behind her.

“Thanks,” she whispered, pulling lightly at those fine hairs at the base of his skull, the ones that tapered to a delicate point before giving way to skin.

He said nothing, glancing down. She noticed his gaze catching on her chest and waist before hastily looking elsewhere, and then his room suddenly felt very cool, cold even, and her cotton shirt was kind of flimsy and she had definitely floated in here with no pants on, so she reluctantly pulled her arm away from around his shoulders to cover her chest.

He glanced at her hand, now resting on the bed, and after a second covered it with his own. The gesture made her heart twinge, made her brave, and so she bent one of her knees forward, bumping it against his thigh.

They laid there for a while, all that contact possessing an air of tentativeness, both of them reluctant to revisit her question from earlier.

“It’s cold in here,” she finally said.

“Yeah, it is.” He looked around the room. “I can adjust the thermostat.”

“That’s okay.” She was already pulling at the covers, letting go of his hand to wriggle between the sheets. Brick stared for a moment, then followed suit.

“Is this your idea of talking?” he asked.

“No,” she said, a little indignant, and shimmied closer to the warmth of his body. “But I don’t hate it.”

He didn’t pull back, though for a second she thought he might. Instead he wrapped an arm around her, his hand settling on her neck in the same spot she had just been playing with on him.

She traced the jut of his collarbone and kissed it. “You’re warm,” she said. He inhaled, deep, which made his collarbone rise to her lips again. She gave it another kiss.

“You, too.”

“You feel nice.”

His hand caressed the nape of her neck. “You, too.”

The sound of the rain rose to fill the silence that followed, and Blossom was grateful for it as she closed her eyes, Brick’s heartbeat indistinguishable from her own.

***

When Blossom slipped back into consciousness, she found their positions had shifted and dawn was filtering through the blinds, sending dim horizontal lines of light against the wall. She laid on her back with Brick’s arm around her and his head nestled underneath her neck. She wondered when the rain had stopped.

She rested her gaze on the line of his shoulder, rising and falling with his breath, unwilling to shift and risk losing that closeness. Morning painted the room differently; sunlight had dialed down its magic. She stared at him for what felt like hours, but when she heard the rattle of the housekeeping cart, still several rooms down, time had seemed to pass so quickly.

She gave it a few more rooms, waiting to see if he would move.

“Brick,” she said, finally. The cart was two rooms away, now. She had to call her sisters, and from there the trip would continue as planned, or maybe it was home they were headed instead. In any case they had to leave.

 _Bye_ , she thought, and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Brick,” she said, a little louder now, because he hadn’t stirred. “We have to go.”

His arm tightened around her.

“Wait,” he whispered, and it was the smallest sound she’d ever heard him make, in all the time they’d known each other. She opened her eyes and stared at that retro, textured ceiling, the memory of last night’s rain filling her with a sudden sadness.

“Not yet,” he said, his voice impossibly small as he squeezed her closer. “Just… just a little longer.”


	6. field notes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from nov 2019. drunkonust on dw requested butch being receptive to a lady's bedroom needs, buttercup specifically. vaguely nsfw.

“So why isn’t the sex working for you?”

When Butch says this out loud, he’s touched by the fact that Buttercup has the decency to act indignant on his behalf.

“Why would—no, it’s—what are you talking about?” she sputters, her face going scarlet, and he laughs because it’s cute, which maybe is the wrong thing to do, because then she gets indignant on _her_ behalf and says, “Well, it’s not like I need to come to enjoy it,” and then the fucking floor has dropped out from under him and before they know it they’re actually _fighting_ about it, which was not his intention, his intention was to be a good partner, to have a conversation like normal people, to make her _happy_ , for Christ’s sake.

He has to leave and fly around for awhile because at first blush the fight doesn’t seem to be getting them anywhere and it’s not exactly cathartic to be told that he’s not good in bed. He’s up there for a good hour or two, trying to cool off, and when he gets back to her place she’s sitting there in the dark.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she says, her head on her knees. “I don’t know how to tell you what I want because I don’t know what I want.”

_Nothing’s wrong with you_ , he thinks, any residual anger melting away. He feels like a fucking idiot.

***

It becomes a project, though his first attempts are a little misguided.

“Watch this,” he says, thrusting his phone in her face, and after the fifth video she screams that if he tries to make her watch another porno she’s going to punch him in his stupid God damn throat.

“Are you into that?” he asks, genuinely serious, and so she punches him in the throat.

Through trial-and-error he discovers that the porn is a no-go and the vibrator just intimidates her, so he switches gears and settles for passive observation.

It has an interesting effect—on him, mostly. He likes her default resting bitch face, the way the corners of her mouth turn towards the ground, and subsequently, how they move up when she catches him sneaking looks at her or when he makes her laugh. He likes the look she gets when she’s flipping through recipes or watching reality cooking shows, alternating between scowls of “What the fuck, who would eat that,” and intense, rapt attention. He likes the way her palm smushes her lips when she’s concentrating, the way she silently mouths the words to her favorite songs, the way her brow immediately furrows and her eyes flash when she hears police sirens or a call comes in on her hotline.

“I like your face,” he tells her, and the corners of her perfect, resting bitch face lips turn up.

“I like your dumb face, too,” she says, and kisses him, open-mouthed.

***

He gets really good at listening without meaning to.

She said she didn’t know what she wants, but it’s only half-true. She just doesn’t know how to say it out loud. So Butch learns how to pay attention.

There’s a certain way she breathes when he does something she likes, a certain sighing quality it takes on. A deepening to it, though different from the way it deepens when she’s losing interest and falling asleep. She never says a word and is careful not to vocalize too much at all, but when she does, oh, how he notices, and learns he should do it again.

She mumbles at him one night, so quietly he nearly misses it because he’s too fixated on the quickening of her pulse underneath his lips on her inner thigh.

“What?” he whispers, stunned by the unexpected magic of this moment, and feels her shudder as his warm breath hits her skin.

“C’mere,” she mumbles again, and then her hand is in his hair, pulling his face up towards hers for a kiss, and her skin is so warm as she arches her body to meet his, so warm and open and soft that he is suddenly elated, thrilled to find he’s done something right, for her.

***

Butch doesn’t know it, but for the first time in his life he is actually studying something and learning. 

He knows things that nobody else will, or could. How her palm smushes her lips when his teeth graze her neck. How she silently mouths his name when they kiss. How her brow furrows and her eyes flash in that one incredible moment that he can’t get enough of, that he can’t believe he’s lucky enough to bear witness to.

He knows when to push and when to pull back. He knows where she wants to be touched, where she wants to be kissed. And when. The when is important, too. There’s timing. It’s an art. A language. A small one, yet just as vast and even trickier to learn, with no alphabet or symbols to guide him.

He wants to get better at it, every time he kisses her, touches her, every time he hears her hiss his name against his mouth. He wants to be an expert in his field, because his field is Buttercup, and she is the only world he wants to know.

“Come here,” she says, and he does, knowing exactly what she wants is him.

He studies it and learns, because loving Buttercup is a language. He wants to be the only one to ever speak it.


	7. the view from the sidelines

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from nov 2019. otakuspirit on dw requested Prof U's pov on the relationships between the Girls & the Boys. I hesitated to get too in depth as it is something that gets touched on in a few chapters in TEF proper.

The Boys prove an interesting problem.

_Development_ , Professor Utonium mentally corrects. He’s trying to course correct. Not every punkass kid that comes shuffling to his doorstep to pick up Blossom, Bubbles, or Buttercup is a problem.

Of course, not every punkass kid could level a city block with one well-timed eyebeam blast. Not every punkass kid is a Rowdyruff Boy.

The dating was an adjustment in and of itself, on the whole. Getting used to the idea that his daughters were trading in markers and boxing gloves and books for “hangs” (if that’s what they call it these days; Utonium has trouble keeping up) was stressful enough before those outings took on a more romantic edge.

Though that’s not entirely true. The Girls still have their interests. They’ve just expanded to include relationships. And Utonium is not a key player, not now. He’s support staff. He will continue to be. As bitter a pill as it is to swallow, he recognizes that.

He had always known the time would arrive someday. He just hadn’t expected the full, complicated spectrum of emotions that came prepackaged with it. He knows his Girls are more capable than others—certainly more physically capable, but hopefully mentally so in equal measure. He’s tried to encourage their confidence, every day. They seem okay, maybe even better than most.

Maybe too much so. They are leaving him faster than he expected. But he’s trying to course correct. He’s working at being okay with it.

He’s trying to divorce the knowledge of what shenanigans two teenagers could get up to from the memories he has of tucking his girls in to bed and leaving the hall light on for them at night. They’re older now. He had always known. The time has arrived. Here it is.

But even so. 

There’s a sadness there, a general anxiety that he can’t quell no matter how strong he knows they are. Anger, too. The Professor always considered himself fairly perceptive given his line of work, but the pride he feels at watching his girls grow into the young women they’re on their way to becoming is tempered by how furious he feels at every comment, every public appearance, every acknowledgement and declaration by the broader world of how pretty they are, how hot they are, how sexy.

He understands he’s probably biased, being their father. But they’re also teenagers, for Christ’s sake. He supposes it was naive of him to think three superpowered girls would be immune to this treatment. That doesn’t stop him from being angry about it.

The one thing he didn’t worry about—or, well, still worried about, just not as much as the other stuff—was the physical aspect. At least, until now.

He had not expected to worry about the Girls getting involved with former adversaries, made more intimidating since the Boys are now riddled with the same teenage hormones as every other snivelling punkass kid out there. But he knows his girls are good. He knows they’re smart. He trusts their judgment. They’ve never truly given him reason to worry.

The Girls can see and date whomever they want. They deserve that freedom. The Professor is their creator, their father, their permanent support system. He will stand by their decisions. But heaven help those who hurt them.

The Rowdyruff Boys are no exception.


	8. pathetic fallacy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from dec 2019. coffee_tea_2020 on dw requested reds and romance.

Brick doesn’t like the look everybody gives him and Blossom when they share the news that they’re moving in together. It’s barely a look at all—a mere flick of the eyes towards him and back, under some misguided perception that they’re being subtle.

It does shed some light on why his stolen glances at her when they were in what could be called their courting stage resulted in her reaching for his rain-soaked face in the last real fight they had. He remembers the storm stopping as her lips met his, remembers the clouds parting almost instantaneously to bathe them in sunlight, how she warmed him from the inside out.

Nowadays he thinks he misremembers the moment, that it seems more cliché than reality. Pathetic fallacy is a literary device, not a real world event.

“Is it that hard for them to believe we love each other?” she grumbles when they’re out of earshot, and suddenly the sun bursts out of the clouds.

_Pathetic_ , Brick thinks, and pulls her in to kiss her.

***

He isn’t always convinced of it himself. It seems some cosmic mistake, like something out there is fucking around. He isn’t sure they’re actually good for each other. She’s too uptight, too high-strung, too committed to right and wrong. Too many things.

_She’s like me_ , Brick thinks, then, _She likes me_.

How simple, to move one letter, to rearrange one tiny little thing, and have the world around him change.

***

It’s so easy at night. The darkness offers something intangible, an illusion that blots out everything around her and smudges all her imperfections. Under the covers he looks and looks, but she has none. She’s perfect.

“I love you,” she whispers, and he tamps down the voice of doubt in the back of his mind that is constantly asking, _How can you_ , because loving Blossom is Brick’s greatest act of rebellion, his greatest act of surrender.

_I love you, too_ , he thinks, and then, remembering, speaks it.


	9. ether drift theory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from june 2020. ironysgrace on dw requested brick finding blossom's dark side intriguing. i took both title and heavy inspiration from the æon flux episode of the same name.

Brick flung open the door to Mojo’s observatory, sending little plumes of the fog layered at his feet into the air.

“Brick!” Blossom’s voice rang out across the darkened space, cleared of Mojo’s belongings and replaced with what looked like all the furniture from Him’s hellish country home now decorating its landscape. A darkened aquarium curved along half the length of the wall, arcing behind her and the flock of staticky television screens that fanned out around her perch. “I thought you might be coming.”

“Man. You adapted to the evil aesthetic fast.”

“I’m a quick study.”

“Are you sitting on a fucking throne?”

“Research tells that supervillains don’t excel at subtlety.” She stood, the fabric of her dress catching the light as its skirt shimmered, like black liquid pouring off her to the floor. “Can I take your coat for you?”

_Supervillain? Getting ahead of yourself there, aren’t you?_

Several small, palm-sized robots hovered near him and offered their tiny robot arms. He waved them off. “I was gonna ask about these guys.”

“I needed assistants,” she said, floating down and adjusting the elbow length opera gloves on her arms. He would’ve commented on the ridiculousness of it if it weren’t for all that insanely distracting cleavage that would’ve sent her former self into a flustered dead faint.

“What about your sisters?”

Blossom smiled wanly. “We had a difference of opinion. I assume that’s why you’re here? Or is it for your surrogate father?”

“Who?” Brick deadpanned, and her lips pulled to one corner of her face in a way that was distractingly appealing. In fact, the closer she got the more it was working for him. What had looked ridiculous at fifty feet was looking better by the second. Also, well, the whole cleavage situation.

She stopped a disappointing five feet away. “I suppose it’s too much to hope you came here just to see me?”

He took his time studying her, reflecting on his decoy status. Under normal circumstances he would’ve balked at being reduced to a mere distraction, especially at the Powerpuff Girls’ suggestion, but Bubbles had been right—it wouldn’t have made sense for either her or Buttercup to try to appeal to their sister’s sense of reason when it hadn’t worked the first few times, and neither of his brothers had the capacity or wits to keep her interested in conversation for long enough.

“The rumors about you and the lab incident piqued my curiosity.”

“‘Rumors,’ huh?” she said, her pink eyes sparkling.

“Something about an explosion?”

She shook her head, a catlike grin gracing her lips. “An exaggeration.”

“A weapon, then. And you, testing it on… yourself?”

“That part’s true. Not a terribly sophisticated origin story for me, I’m afraid. Although does it count as a weapon if it didn’t kill anyone or inflict damage?”

“I’d think damage to your psyche would count.”

She clasped her hands behind her and leaned forward. Very distracting.

“Do I look damaged to you, Brick?”

_Far from it._ “No. But if you had bigger tits you could probably be your own hentai.”

That catlike grin spread, baring teeth. “Thanks for noticing.”

The front zip of her dress dangled, tantalizingly within reach. Brick weighed his options, wondering just what kind of decoy he was supposed to be. Conversation seemed to be working, but getting physical was looking better by the second. Surely his brothers and her sisters had had time to surround the perimeter and cut off the volcanic power source to the observatory. Any second now the lights would flicker and dim—

“Oh my gosh,” she mock-gasped, and pulled back, clutching her hands to her chest. “I’m so rude. I didn’t even offer you a seat.”

He couldn’t help but laugh; even as a joke it was a very Blossom thing to say.

She cocked her hands on her hips and looked around, pursing her lips in mock thought. The ditzy bimbo act was a little heavy-handed, but it was also kinda working for her.

“I guess I’m not really set up for guests, either,” she said, pouting. She locked eyes with him again, her expression snapping back into that grin once more, and indicated behind her. “There’s only the one chair. But I’m a gracious host.”

“Oh?” His gaze darted towards the throne and back.

“Have a seat, Brick. Give it a try.”

He snorted. “Is that your idea of tempting me?” He flicked the pull of her zipper and leaned in. “Because I have a better suggestion.”

She lightly smacked his hand away and called his bluff, pulling up within a hair’s breadth of actual body contact. Her face drew close, he blanked for one crucial second, and then the opportunity to gain any sort of upper hand slipped his grasp.

Her lips met his cheek, and she spoke.

“Humor me, Brick.”

It felt like a match had been struck against his face. She lingered for a long moment, then pulled away, the hint of a smile playing at her lips. The idea that he was here to help out some weird combination of family and arch nemeses seemed stupider by the second. Not that Blossom was giving him any reason to complain.

He tore his eyes away from that body, that face, that smirk, and then he was doing exactly as she had asked, floating past her up those illuminated steps. The dark throne stood out in stark contrast against the bright static of the monitors and the aquarium that served as its backdrop. Unnatural shapes floated just beyond the glass. The throne loomed.

He stopped, taking it in. It was bigger than he had realized; more intimidating up close. He thought back to the sight of her, lounging catlike in this thing that dared him, challenging him to take a seat.

He considered, then conceded and instead turned to take in the view—

“Brick.”

Blossom had floated soundlessly just behind him and before he had a chance to react the air between them was gone. Her hand met his throat and instinct sent alarms ringing in his head, which were then immediately silenced by her mouth meeting his. He wanted to pull back, hating himself for thrilling to the contact, but his chest seemed to fill with tension that only Blossom could release. His eyes fluttered closed. She pressed forward and he yielded.

Kissing Blossom felt like sinking into the depths of a thing he had never given a voice for fear that it would hold him fast and drown him. Now that it was actually happening, it felt more like exhaling.A relief.

Her hand slid down his chest, stopping at his heart. He opened his eyes.

A familiar shadow caught in his peripherals, and he furrowed his brow, turning his head—wait, no. He couldn’t turn his head. He couldn’t move at all.

“What the,” he managed, before Blossom finished shoving him past the glossy surface of the aquarium—not glass filled with liquid. No glass at all. Just a gel-like substance that swallowed him whole and suspended him so completely he could not even blink.

Blossom drew back her unaffected arm, the gel slowly closing and smoothing over the surface once her arm had been completely withdrawn. Brick could only watch as she snapped off the shoulder-length gloves, letting them hit the floor where the bots collected them. This deep in he could just see the familiar shape that had caught his attention was Boomer, frozen in the same gel that had claimed him.

One of her hands floated to her face and she palmed her cheek. That sly smile, pinned in place for so long, dissolved now into flat stoicism. A few bots came up behind her, bearing a stack of folded clothes. She turned away from him as she unzipped her dress and started to change.

The observatory roof boomed as it curved open, and a faint buzzing sound gradually increased, marred only occasionally by the rustle of her clothing. An endless wave of bots had collected around her by the time she finished. She turned and cast one last look across the expanse of silhouettes suspended behind her, knotting her tie. Her eyes lingered on no one.

The hum of her bots increased, then faded as they dispersed outside. The observatory roof moved in reverse now, closing. Blossom floated towards the diminishing light in its center, now a half-moon, now a sliver. Then she shot out into Townsville, the fragments of her bright pink streak the last remaining light source in the room before everything shuttered into pitch black.


	10. here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from july 2020. sappy, touchy-feely greens. a small piece of something that's bloomed into something less small since; more to come later. un-beta'd.

“Wait.”

The word practically jettisons itself out of Buttercup’s mouth, a bullet fired out of the chamber that is her body. Her arms fly around Butch’s shoulders, faintly damp from his sweat. He’s still panting, like her.

“Okay,” he breathes, his eyes glassy. The afterglow is just starting to set in, and he’s pliable, amenable to anything. They haven’t been doing this long—mere days since she got the apartment—but it’s been long enough for her to learn a few things.

She’s susceptible to this headiness, too. A particular sort of bliss sets in, a feeling she’s still getting used to. It makes her affectionate and needy, weirdly. Weird. Weird that his hands can spend so much time on her, that his body can be so close to hers for so long, that he can kiss her and kiss her and still she wants more of him. More touching, more skin, more more more.

One of her hands is operating like it has a mind of its own, sweeping through his hair, tangling it in a fist. The other caresses his shoulders, tracing the line of them, the broadness of them, and she feels ready to go again. She kisses him, pulling on his lower lip.

He shifts a little awkwardly and she pulls back, but her hands stay where they are.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” He shifts. “I just thought maybe I was crushing you.”

She takes a moment to process this and then just stares. “I can bench press a tank. How the fuck are you gonna crush me?”

“I dunno. I thought maybe you’d be uncomfortable.”

“I’m not,” she says, pulling him closer.

“Okay,” he says, and lets her.

She finds herself kissing him again. Just soft, no hunger behind it. He’s taken on a softness she never noticed before. Or maybe she’s projecting. His hand goes to her cheek and she thinks about how they sparred the other day, half-heartedly, looking for any excuse they could take to get their hands on each other. It’s at odds with how he moves towards her now, in this new activity. The hesitation, the tentativeness in his approach, his touch. As if any moment she’ll change her mind and bolt.

A thought occurs to her. “Is that why you roll off of me so fast afterwards?”

“What?” Still glassy. “Huh?”

“Because you’re afraid you’ll crush me? Or that I don’t like it?”

He thinks on this for a second and she brushes his hair out of his face so she can see this expression better. She likes it. She never realized how much she liked his face before.

“I guess I thought maybe you didn’t like, you know. All the touching.”

Oh, please.

“I love the touching,” she says, not hearing the word until she sees him react, and then she’s blushing, too.

“Okay,” he mumbles, face red and unable to meet her eye.

An awkward silence manages to squeeze into what little air there is between them, uncomfortable and unwelcome. She steels herself and charges forward to snuff it out. “Like the other night, or morning, whatever. When you brushed your hand through my hair and then kissed my shoulder. I liked that.”

“Oh. Okay.” Still red.

“Did you think I was asleep?”

“Yeah.”

“You can do that when I’m awake, too. I don’t mind.” She hadn’t moved on purpose. That little touch had felt precious to her, had pulled at her insides so hard it felt as if she might burst from the joy.

“Okay.” He swallows, his brow furrowing. “What about… in public?”

There’s an anxiety that surges through her at the thought. This— _this_ this—has barely been going on a few days. She hasn’t really had the time to process that _this_ this probably means, yeah. Public outings are going to be a thing eventually.

“I mean, we don’t have to,” he says. “It can just be... here.”

Here. Here he is, solid, warm, breathing, draped on top of her and real. Butch’s hair is in her eyes and she can sense her name in his throat. The ease with which her name slips from his mouth feels like warm honey filling her insides.

“I like it here,” she whispers, not meaning to whisper. Her hands dance in his hair, across his shoulders. He’s drifting closer.

“Me too.” She wonders if his own whisper was intentional or not.

Her hands drift down, along his sides, skating on bare skin. His naked body is still a novelty to her. New, sometimes terrifying territory. A series of dips and ridges that she knew existed but didn’t become real until her hands knew them, too. Funny, all the places on him where her hands fit so well, as if he was molded just right, just for her.

She thinks this is probably what they call the Honeymoon Phase. It feels intoxicating and heady when they reach for each other, impossible to imagine doing this with anyone else. Her hands float around his hips, tentative along muscle, bone. She tries to picture it being anyone else’s body, anyone else’s face, and just the thought feels like a betrayal.

“Butch,” she whispers, and even though she’s said his name a million times before it’s taken on a different color recently. Now it’s a command, a summons, a declaration of need and want. So much in just one name.

He answers it.

_-fin-_


	11. the big chair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from sept 2020. philly requested "boomer, hustlin'."

“You have _got_ to be kidding me,” Blossom said, her typically composed face frozen in a look of pure disbelief as the Powerpuff Girls’ new Brand Manager for Social Media took a seat across from her and her sisters.

He tossed three phones on the lucite conference table and carried no papers or writing utensils. Two assistants who barely looked old enough to drive flanked him.

“Morning, Girls,” Boomer said cordially. “Looking forward to working with you.”

Buttercup turned to an apoplectic Blossom. “Okay, it was worth me getting up before eleven just to see that look on your face,” she said, sneering at her sister before swigging her coffee.

“Good morning,” Bubbles said politely. “Your building is lovely.”

“Thanks,” one of the assistants said.

“Hello and _what are you doing here?_ ” Blossom demanded.

“Well, I started as an intern in the Social Media department because Mojo wanted me out of his hair and I wanted to be doing cool shit instead of being like a paperboy or something.”

“How could you _possibly_ be appropriate for this role?” Blossom cried. “What—what credentials do you have?”

“It’s good that we know each other,” Boomer barreled on through. “We can skip all the intro and pleasantry crap. On that note, congrats on turning twenty-two!”

“Twenty-four,” Bubbles corrected.

He blinked. “Seriously? Shit, that means _I’m_ older than I thought, too.”

“This is not an encouraging start,” Blossom said.

“Anyway, you know that ‘What’d I miss?’ post that went viral last week for Kasey D? That was my caption.”

Bubbles gasped, her face lighting up. “Oh my gosh, that was _you?_ ”

“Oh my God, wow,” Buttercup deadpanned.

“What,” Blossom said, her expression conveying _Speak adult English_ , please, and Boomer pointed at her.

“This is why you need a brand manager.” One of his phones dinged, and he snatched it up.

“Is that why you have three phones?” Buttercup asked, sucking down the rest of her coffee.

“I have one phone. I’m tweeting for a couple of our clients today.”

One of the assistants piped up. “Boomer boosted our engagement across five of our clients’ brands by fifty to eighty percent.”

“Ooh!” Bubbles pulled out her phone to take notes. “Any tips?”

“We’re here for the _team_ , Bubbles,” Blossom said. “Not your personal brand.”

“Your personal brand is fine, anyway,” Boomer said, indicating to his assistant to flip on the projector. “We checked out all your personal accounts. Bubbles is the only one who knows what she’s doing.”

Bubbles puffed up. “Thank you.”

“So right now our goals are to boost numbers. Most of the group’s initial followers are going to be driven from Bubbles’ account, so if she’s cool—I mean, if _you’re_ cool with it, I’d like to promote the launch from yours—”

“All she ever posts are selfies and shit she’s buying,” Buttercup said.

“Not true—she varies her poses and the angles, and the zooms. See? Look at the variety on her page. Lots of socializing with girlfriends, too. When she does post food or product, she connects it back to herself in the caption. It’s like she’s inviting us into her life. And the consistency! Daily posts, consistent aesthetic, engages with followers. Perfection. You should have _my_ job.”

“Are you hiring and what’s the pay?” Bubbles asked. 

“ _Hey,_ ” Blossom said. The assistant nearest Bubbles passed her a business card.

“Now, contrast this to Blossom’s.” The slide switched. “Why are you backlit in every selfie? What’s with this hard-on for beige? Total of maybe fifteen posts? You’ve had this thing for a year.”

“Boo, lame,” Buttercup jeered.

“That is not necessary,” Blossom snapped. “Mine is supposed to be for networking.”

“Great! Enjoy your ten followers,” Boomer chirped, then went somber as he flipped over to Buttercup’s page. “Buttercup has exactly one post up, the caption of which is ‘Bubbles made this for me and wouldn’t shut up till I posted. Here. Happy Bubbles?’ Also the pic is too dark.”

Blossom squinted. “How do you have more followers than _me?_ ”

“So I’m putting together my gameplan for the Powerpuff account. I know it’s basic, but I’m thinking of starting with a row-by-row grid focusing on the iconography. Hit up that nostalgia.”

“Ooh, fancy,” Bubbles said.

“Blossom’s got the bow, Bubbles let’s do the stripe, and Buttercup? We’re going for blood there. But not crazy blood. Like, an aesthetically pleasing amount. It’ll be filtered. Could also go for a fist, a smirk, you know.”

“I don’t think blood is really appropriate,” Blossom said.

“Don’t take her note,” Buttercup said. “More blood.”

“We’re trying to find that balance between your edgier fans and your, you know. Less… edgy fans.”

“Losers,” Buttercup supplied.

“ _Buttercup._ ”

“All of our fans are lovely,” Bubbles said diplomatically.

“Do you mind if we grab the photos from your phone? I want to build a library of images that we can pull for landscape shots, selfies, Throwback Thursdays, that kind of stuff.”

Blossom narrowed her eyes. “That sounds suspicious.”

“As long as you don’t have anything incrim—wait, no nudes, right?”

Blossom had leapt to her feet and was in the process of drawing her fist back to punch Boomer’s deceptively adorable, innocent face when Bubbles and Buttercup, in the process of passing over their phones, paused.

“One sec,” Bubbles said.

“Lemme check,” Buttercup said.

“Oh my _God_ , you two are _not serious!_ ”

“I’m sorry, have you seen me naked?” Buttercup asked their leader. “Because I look _incredible._ ” She tossed her phone at Boomer, who caught it one handed. “It’s fine, I’m clean.”

“Clean!” Bubbles passed hers over.

“Y’all should really stick to Polaroids or like an old school digital camera for that stuff,” Boomer muttered, blushing as he took Bubbles’ phone. Blossom, having been cowed by her sisters’ lack of decency, slipped hers to his assistant, grumbling.

“And shockingly, Bubbles has the only usable gallery,” Boomer said after a few quick scrolls. “Taraneh, AirDrop this. Buttercup has… like twenty pictures on it.”

“She’s not a picture person,” Bubbles said, her tone indicating this was an ongoing argument between them.

Boomer _tch_ ed. “Gonna have to change that, Buttercup. Up your photo game.”

“Uuuughhh.”

“Okay, I’ve got homework for you three.”

“ _Uuuughhh._ ”

“Buttercup, _please._ ”

“In the leadup to our launch I want you to start posting _regularly._ ” He punctuated this with a pointed look at Blossom and Buttercup. “Every day is best, three times a week at the bare minimum. Except for ‘Don’t post at night,’ I’m not gonna dictate when you schedule, but whatever your posting days and times are, stick to them. Be. Consistent. If you need a starting point go with Monday, Wednesday, Friday at nine in the morning.”

“ _Nine?!_ ”

“Maybe twelve for Buttercup,” Boomer said. “When you post, if you see a new filter or feature, _use it immediately._ And once a week comment on at least, I dunno, five? Let’s go with five posts on different accounts. People or brands you like, whatever.”

“Oh, this is going to be so easy,” Bubbles said, punching this all into her notes app.

“How can we trust you?” Blossom said. “How do we know this isn’t some nefarious plot of Him’s or Mojo’s to go through you to get to us?”

Boomer had the audacity to look at Blossom as if _she_ was not the being with the highest IQ in the room.

“Well,” he said, slowly and deliberately, “I’m getting paid.”

“But you could just turn on us. Can’t you? Wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t you?”

“What, are you trying to convince him?” Buttercup asked.

“It would certainly make more sense,” Blossom said.

He still had that infuriating look and spoke with that condescendingly placating tone. “But then I would get _fired_ and I have rent to pay.”

“Your Dad’s like the King of Evil,” Buttercup said. “Why isn’t he paying for your place?”

“Are you joking? I make more than he does.”

“Oh, his place is _super_ nice,” Bubbles said. “He posted his move-in process.”

Boomer gasped, his eyes sparkling. “Oh my God, you _follow_ me?”

One of the assistants interrupted. “Boomer, next client in five.”

“Shit. Okay, last minute stuff! While you three boost up your numbers, we’re going to work on brainstorming some tie-ins. We’ll e-mail you some options by end of week.”

“Ooh!” Bubbles bounced in her seat. “Can I make requests?”

“No promises, but e-mail them to Taraneh and Letitia here and we’ll see what we can make happen. We’re also gonna hook you up with some tickets to a pop-up.”

“Possible to get a plus-one?” Bubbles asked, batting her eyelashes.

“Uh, who did you have in mind?” Boomer appeared to be holding his breath. “Boyfriend? Girlfriend?”

“I wanna bring the Professor,” she said.

“Aww,” Taraneh and Letitia said.

“Sure,” Boomer said, exhaling. “But make sure you get some solo pics, not just you and him. Taraneh, Letitia, anything I forgot?”

“Weather’s good this weekend,” Taraneh said. “We should get some letter balloons for teaser pics.”

“I was thinking wildlife sanctuary?” Letitia suggested.

“Foxes!” Bubbles chirped, bouncing up and down.

“Why are _we_ here?” Buttercup asked Blossom.

“I still think you’re up to something,” Blossom said.

Boomer scooped up the phones and stood. “Please. I mean, legit, but still. Get over it. We’re twenty-two.”

“Twenty-four,” Blossom and Bubbles corrected.

“Oops. Right. Anyway, do your homework.”

“ _Uuuughhh._ ”

“Chin up, Buttercup.” Boomer paused on his way out, allowing Taraneh and Letitia ahead. The shadow of something sinister darkened those blue eyes, or maybe it was something simpler. Something as simple as Opportunity. 

“You three and me, we’re gonna take over the world.”


	12. to make it true

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from nov 2020. jujuandgetdown on dw requested reds, forced to visit a psychic and get a reading.

This session was going poorly.

Madame Argentina had had a bad feeling as soon as they’d walked in. Given her line of work, she should have listened to that message. Although she didn’t exactly need the spirits’ help to tell her that when one of the Powerpuff Girls floated into her tent it wouldn’t be long before her goose was cooked.

Miracle of miracles, however, Blossom had not appeared to notice or even realize it was her. Granted, she had come in distracted. Or maybe adulthood had dulled her senses. It certainly hadn’t done her any favors when it came to her taste in lovers.

“I’m telling you, this is a waste of time,” her partner had said as she’d walked in. He’d hung back, lingering at the tent’s entrance.

“Brick, shush.” Blossom had taken her seat without casting a glance back at him. “We’re already here.”

“ _Ugh,_ ” Brick had groaned, trudging in like a petulant child.

“Stop that.”

“This is stupid.”

“Can you not? We have an audience.”

“Well that doesn’t stop _you_ from—”

And then that continued for another twenty minutes.

_This_ was what the spirits had been warning her about—the couple squabbling in front of her, picking and needling at each other and sucking the life force out of everyone unfortunate enough to cross their path. Madame Argentina had an elbow on the table and her chin in one hand, her initial panic at seeing Blossom having long since subsided into bored irritation. The tarot deck arced before her, untouched. She hadn’t even had the chance to shuffle yet.

Suddenly she heard a ruffling of feathers—the telltale sign of Fred having successfully fleeced their unsuspecting patrons. Fantastic. Now she could work on getting them the hell out of her tent.

She turned to the young man and interrupted his whinging to observe, “You are a skeptical person.”

Brick now turned his growing ire on her, clearly welcoming another subject to hurl insults at.

“No, I’m just allergic to bullshit,” he retorted.

“You enjoy her company, but sometimes she drives you crazy.”

“Really covering all your bases there, aren’t you?”

“You’re putting out a lot of negative energy. It will interfere with the reading.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Brick started clapping. “You’re doing great! I look forward to hearing you make broad, generalized statements that someone’s dead cat told you or whatever. I don’t know. You’re the professional here.”

“Brick.” A warning, issued through gritted teeth.

“You wanted me to help, I'm helping.” A riposte. Also issued through gritted teeth.

“You're not helping at all!”

He threw up his arms. “Well, then can I fucking leave? You're not the only one who had shit they wanted to do today!”

She made a face at him, one where the tightness of her lips conveyed _Language_ while the arc of her brow asked what could he possibly have on that list.

“Oh, just because you won't let me do crime anymore I’m not supposed to have any other hobbies or interests, is that it? Should I be running these things by you for your approval to confirm their legality?”

“‘Won’t _let you?_ ’ These aren't my special rules that I made up to ruin your day, it is the _law._ ”

“You know, I'm a psychic, not a marriage counselor,” Madame Argentina deadpanned.

“You're not a psychic either because those aren't real,” Brick snapped. “Stop bullshitting yourself.”

“Okay, enough!” Madame Argentina swept the cards fanned out in front of her back into her hand. “Time’s up. We’re done here. Get out.”

“Great,” Blossom threw a glare at Brick. “ _Now_ look what you’ve done.”

“Wait, we can’t leave yet. We paid you for a reading, even if it’s bullshit.”

“No refunds,” Madame Argentina said.

“Plus, we’re still stalling,” Brick continued, and Madame Argentina froze.

“What do you mean, ‘stalling?’”

Suddenly her tent collapsed to reveal a swathe of agents surrounding them. A number of them were carting a squawking Fred away.

“Nice to see you again, Madame Argentina,” Blossom said archly. “Did you really think I’d forget you?”

“What is going on here?!”

“You’re wanted for international fraud,” Blossom explained. “We were the decoys.”

“ _Expensive_ decoys,” Brick reminded the agents surrounding them.

“I really should have listened to those spirits,” Madame Argentina said, then tossed the deck of cards in her hands at the two of them and bolted. Or, uh, tried to. Blossom already had Argentina by the back of her collar and was holding her a good bit above the ground at that point.

“Nice try.”

***

A high-spirited Blossom suggested they take the scenic route home in the wake of their mini-victory. Brick grumbled something vague about the pointlessness of walking with superpowers but acquiesced anyway.

“We played into those roles a little _too_ well,” he muttered.

“In fairness, we’ve had a lot of practice. And it worked.”

“Because everyone’s so quick to believe it.”

Blossom glanced sidelong at him, sensing A Mood. She thought of what her sisters had told her and dialed the pride in her voice back a bit. “It’s a popular trope. We’re just a modern day Sam and Diane, you and I.”

Brick scoffed and she watched a little of the tension leave his brow. “Nobody our age would get that reference.”

“Mm.” After a moment, she wove her arm in his. He didn’t resist. “You get it.”

“Of course _I_ do. You made me watch it with you.”

She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t _make_ you. You had free will.”

“‘Had,’ huh? Quite the slip.”

“This ‘I’m a jerk’ shtick is getting old, Brick.”

“We’re not like them, anyway.”

“No?”

He stared straight ahead, their steps aligned. “They didn’t get together in the end.”

They walked in silence for a bit.

Blossom took a deep breath. “No. I guess not.” She leaned her cheek against his shoulder, then did a slight double-take. “What’s that?”

Brick glanced down to see her reaching for his shirt pocket. “Hey, quit copping a feel in public.”

“Uh huh,” she muttered, and pulled out one of Madame Argentina’s tarot cards.

“What’s it say?” he said, then snatched it away before she could answer.

“Jerk.”

“‘Ten of Cups,’” Brick read, then moved to incinerate it.

“Wait, don’t. I’ll look it up when we get home.”

Brick huffed a breath but let her take it back anyway. “Just text Bubbles. I bet she knows.”

“Probably.” Blossom carefully slipped the card back into his pocket. “The art looks nice.”

“Cool design,” he conceded. “Guess we got our fortune told after all.”

“Yes, despite your best efforts,” she said, squeezing his hand.

“I’m offended that you think that was me at my best.”

Blossom grinned and pressed her lips to his cheek. He leaned into her instinctively, the entirety of his being going through that now-familiar process of softening at her touch.

“In that case, I look forward to seeing you do better.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this wraps up all the requests, plus the one ficlet i managed to write in the past two years, ha. i may add some chickenscratch & rejected bits and pieces from when i was working on these (extended author's notes i guess?).
> 
> thanks to everyone for your lovely comments and the support. it's been a surreal year. take care of yourselves and each other out there. 💗💙💚


	13. chickenscratch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, here are the random bits from this last batch of ficlets that wound up either not going anywhere or morphing into something else. When writing these I worked out of one big document - any notes or scenes that came into mind went into this one doc next to all the bits that actually turned into final ficlets. Some folks have told me they find this stuff interesting, so for those of you who do, here's to y'all! Cheers and have a happy holiday ♥

**(discarded opening paragraphs of ‘to make it true’ - ultimately I felt this setup was working a little too hard and came off boring as a result)**

Madame Argentina had had a bad feeling as soon as they walked in. Maybe that was to be expected—the nature of her work being what it was, she _was_ a spiritual consultant of sorts, in tune with the unnatural world, here to peddle divinations and invocations to anyone foolish enough to desire them.

Although the bad feeling she’d had then—fear that the former Powerpuff Girl, now an adult, would recognize her despite a very convincing disguise

–

**(notes for ‘field notes’ - discarded because altogether it felt a little over-the-top; I took my favorite bits and worked around those in the final product)**

It’s a language only he knows, and one with no alphabet or symbols or pictographs to serve as a guide. A language of breaths, muscles tensing, shivers. It’s smaller, and yet so vast and tricky to learn.

Learning to speak it because he loves her

rapt attention to her sounds, her breath, her pulse. He has to pay attention; she was never one for words. Neither of them are.

He wants to be the only one to ever speak it.

–

**(buncha random exploratory bits done for the reds & romance prompt before I settled on what became ‘pathetic fallacy’ plus a title I wound up not using but still really like, a wholeass ending scene, _and_ a separate attempt at a completely different take on the prompt but decided to ditch b/c I didn’t want two ficlets involving canines)**

an act of surrender

“You didn’t have to pick me up.”

A twinge shoots through him, and he grits his teeth. “Maybe I’m trying to be _nice_. Maybe I’m trying to be a good person.”

She’s quiet for a long time as the landscape of Townsville speeds past them.

“It’s a form of control.”

“ _Jesus_ , Blossom,” he says, and he can’t believe they’re fucking fighting about this.

“You’re fucking welcome,” he spits before speeding off.

The seasons they passed through before they reached each other (this was straight up stolen from Ocean Vuong; I kept it in my notes for inspo)

Because sometimes the definition of romance, of loving someone so fully, means surrendering. Letting them pull you under.

Luckily for him, Blossom is always willing to prove him wrong.

The way people talk, it would appear the real challenge of a relationship is staying together. And for a while, that’s true.

There’s one night he thinks he’s really going to do it. He thinks he’s had enough. He thinks everybody else was right, a lifetime of glances askance borne out of an innate wisdom rather than judgment. _You two will never work out_. He thinks everyone already knew.

It’s galling, to be wrong about something. He’s in the air already, halfway to the clouds before he can’t help himself and turns, his heart seizing to know if she’s followed him.

She hasn’t. Also galling.

He hovers, waiting. It strikes him how even at this height, he can still pick out the house. He stares. He thinks about the fighting, her anger, her tears. He thinks about her hands in his. How the sun burst from the clouds.

He wonders if anyone else will know the things he knows about her, how she takes her tea in the morning, how terrible she is at dusting, how she yelped at a moth that surprised her then berated him when he killed it, how she was the first to reach for him after they’d cut and bruised each other bloody for years. The sun afterwards, during, always.

He thinks of how people pity her, how they believe he trapped her. How wrong they are. She’s reached for him, over and over again.

***

He wakes up before her. The birds outside are making a racket. A coyote’s been coming into the neighborhood in the pre-dawn hours, stressing out the crows while it hunts for feral cats. There’s one cat in particular Brick hopes it’ll snag, the one that keeps spraying in their garden. Wild animals gotta eat, too, and he wants the coyote to live.

Seeing it in their yard comes as a surprise. The coyote is slinking in the bushes. Brick keeps one eye on it as he unloads the dishwasher. He checks the calendar. She’s got an early morning meeting. 

–

**(first attempt at ‘the big chair’ which I dropped because my original idea (boomer pulls off an elaborate bubbles-wooing setup at a nightclub) was much too involved for a ficlet; the starred note at the front is a note to myself when I was still thinking I could get this to work)**

**(honestly though I do miss the opportunity I had to write boomer and brick bouncing off one another; I don’t find myself writing those two together that often and think it could be a lot of fun)**

**REDO FROM BOOMER’S POV**

“I can’t believe Dad’s making you come with me,” Boomer grumbled at Brick as they floated down the back alley. The perpetually soaked asphalt glowed orange in the night, .

“Join the fucking club,” Brick said.

“You could ditch. I don’t want you here anyway.”

“He’ll _know_. I got reamed the last time I pulled that shit.”

“You’re gonna cramp my style.”

“ _I’m_ gonna cramp _your_ style? What are you fucking _on?_ ”

“How many followers have _you_ got, Hot Shit?” Boomer fired back, tapping at his phone.

Brick rolled his eyes. “My preferred currency is brain cells. Which makes me a millionaire compared to you.”

They were approaching a sizable crowd at the end of the alley, all clamoring to get in to a cement box adorned by nothing save for a bouncer and a velvet rope that was obviously only there for show. No semblance of order or a line appeared to exist.

Brick sent his gaze skyward, to the top of the building. “They put this place in a power plant?”

“An abandoned power plant,” Boomer said, as if this was supposed to impress him. “Shit. Bouncer’s saying it’s full up already.”

“Oh, too bad! Guess we’re going home.”

Boomer pulled a premium-brand water bottle from the inner pocket of his jacket and snatched at Brick’s arm, inexplicably dragging him into the throng of people accosting the stone-faced bouncer.

–

**(random bits for ‘ether drift theory,’ including an attempt at a more talky ending before I realized I preferred the silent ending more plus a random smoky eye bit I was really committed to getting in there for some reason early on and a couple of last line attempts that all wound up striking me as too cheesy to put in the final product)**

“Your dad’s a prisoner!”

“Who?” Brick said, bored.

“You’re really going all in on the subtlety, huh?” Brick said, taking in the lab, redone in a severe red and black color scheme that assaulted one’s vision.

_Wait, that’s_ my _color scheme._

“You don’t like it?”

He started up the circular staircase, his steps deliberate, his gaze flicking across the hundreds of screens that flanked her perch.

“I didn’t say that.”

–

“Oh, Brick,” Blossom said in mock sadness, shaking her head. A few bots had come up behind her, bearing a stack of folded clothes. She turned away from him as she unzipped her dress and started to change. “I thought you’d pose more of a challenge than that.” She paused in the middle of buttoning her top. “Although you were flirtier than usual, which was fun. I don’t think you would’ve ever confessed to wanting to see me naked when I was good.” Another pause. “Shoot. I probably could’ve gotten _you_ naked.” Brief disappointment passed across her face, then she tilted her head and shrugged. “Ah, well. Missed opportunity. Oh, you know what? Here’s a treat for you.”

One of the bots came up bearing a (and then I got bored so I stopped writing it lol)

“Oh my God, that is a killer smoky eye.”

“Bubbles.”

“Thanks for noticing,” Blossom said, throwing up vogue hands.

“You’re not really dressed the part,” he said, taking in her high-necked white gown, stretching from her chin to the floor. “’Cept for the accessories.”

She stretched out her arms, sheathed in long, black vinyl gloves that shimmered in the light like a snake unfurling.

“I see you’ve discovered eyeliner. As well as several smoky eye tutorials on Youtube.”

“It took awhile to find a good one.”

“It’s like I told my sisters, Brick.” 

The gel closed in around him. He couldn’t even move his eyes.

“I’m a better solo act.”

“You know how to really make people squirm, Brick?”

“Cut to black, right before it gets good.”

–

**(two different attempts at what eventually became ‘celestial navigation,’ a title I still hate! at first I really wanted to write butch in a tub and buttercup Having Feelings about it, then switched gears to something closer to what eventually wound up getting written. I posted this on dw for racketballz’s birthday last year with more extensive notes/setup. if you want to go digging for it, check out the ‘greens’ and/or ‘totally fucking rejected’ tag on my dw.)**

“I’m crashing your Boys’ Night.”

Butch shook his head. “Not just a boys’ night. We _invited_ you.”

“Mm.”

“Don’t come in here. I’m in my underwear.”

“Oh. Wait. Wait, you’re sitting in a tub half-full of water in your underwear?”

“And a t-shirt.” Some splashing. “I think it’s more like a quarter-full.”

She started laughing and shaking her head. “What the fuck. Are you high?”

Butch gasped. “How. _Dare_ you.”

“I saw it in a magazine. This girl was in a tub—”

“What _kind_ of magazine?”

“What kind do you think? But it wasn’t a nudie, actually. She was wearing clothes. I mean, she was okay-looking, I guess. But the shot was sexy.”

“Do you feel sexy?”

“Mostly I feel wet.” Another beat. “Hehe.”

“Dork.”

“I think I need a lady to judge. Wanna go find one for me?”

She stuck her tongue out, even though he couldn’t see her. “Fuck you.”

“Come in here and tell me if I’m hot or not.”

“But you’re in your underwear.”

“I’m inviting you. Obviously I’m okay with it. This is in the name of science.”

Buttercup thought for a second.

“What, are you chicken? It’s not like you’re gonna see it—”

“Ain’t that the truth!” she said, grinning.

“Oh, _fuck you!_ ”

“I’m coming in,” she announced, still laughing. It was good. It’d mask her blush.

He makes a nice line.

Where the water had come into contact with his shirt, the fabric was near-transparent. She wanted to tell him to try opening his legs, but couldn’t bring herself to say so. She was having a hard enough time trying not to let her eyes linger too long.

Maybe his knees together was okay. It certainly wasn’t _bad_. It made him look boyish. It was kind of charming.

“You look kinda charming more than anything.”

He blew a raspberry, and she smirked. “Charming ain’t what I’m going for.”

“Charming’s alright.” She gave him the once over, her attention lingering on his beanie-clad head. “Take that off.”

Butch glanced down. “My underwear?”

“Shut up, dipshit.” Without waiting for him to punctuate his lame joke with a laugh, she snatched at his beanie herself and tossed it aside.

The laughter got strangled in his throat, and his eyes took on another character, peering from behind the hair that now tumbled into his face.

She reached to tousle his bangs, then halted, her senses returning to her. “Run a hand through it?”

“So?” he asked, eyes lifting with the question and his voice like a shot of fire in her chest.

“There,” she whispered, still fussing absentmindedly with his hair, her hand dancing along his face as he looked up at her, his jaw clenching over and over again. “That’s better.”

“Hold still.”

Butch laughed, and his voice sounded wet. Shit. Not a good sign. Buttercup thought of internal bleeding and blood bubbling up his throat.

“What else am I gonna do?” he said, and cleared his throat.

She braced her knee against his chest as gently as she could and gestured for him to grab on to her other leg, firmly planted on the ground.

“I don’t think this is the time,” he said, issuing a pointed look at the metal that had run through his shoulder.

She ignored him and closed her hands around the steel rod, slick with his blood, and silently willed herself to not lose her grip. She wanted to do this in one shot.

He closed his eyes and exhaled. His hand crawled up the back of her calf.

He cried out when she yanked, but she’d succeeded, and it came out clean. Fresh blood welled up, and she threw the metal aside and pressed her hands to it to staunch the wound.

Butch opened his eyes and looked past her, kicking his leg a bit as he rode out the pain.

“I’m dizzy,” he whispered.

“Don’t be dizzy,” she whispered back. Dizzy was bad. Dizzy meant passing out, and with all the blood he’d lost—

“Looking at you makes me dizzy.”

She felt as if a match had been struck inside her chest. “So don’t look at me.”

He blinked torpidly at her, his pupils dilated and filled with the night’s stars.

“No,” he said, and stared.

The bleeding appeared to be slowing, at least. She told him so.

“That’s good,” he said, and stared.

“Butch.”

“Come here,” he whispered. “Please?”

“Let me focus on this.”

“I’m okay. The X is doing the hard part. Or maybe that’s the easy part.”

The sounds of dishes clinking and more general rummaging stirred him awake, and he yawned, blinking.

“Can’t believe you fell asleep up here,” she said, holding a food-laden dish out to him. “Can you sit up? Feed yourself.”

He pressed himself up, muscles stiff. She had a point. Rooftops made for lousy mattresses. “Aw, you saved me some.”

“Shut up.” She came at him with a damp washcloth. “Hang on.”

He set the plate in his lap while she wiped 

–

**(extremely long and overwrought first attempt at what eventually became ‘dust to dust.’ much more extended notes on my dw under the ‘reds’ and/or ‘totally fucking rejected’ tag if you’re curious; i’m not retyping that out here haha)**

“You’re kidding.”

Brick nudged Blossom aside with his good shoulder so he could see. “What? Is it bugs? Don’t tell me it’s fucking leaking.” Thunder and lightning punctuated his statement.

She moved out of the doorway. He took in the single queen-sized bed, framed by yellow walls, a popcorn ceiling, and a carpet straight out of _The Shining_.

“I’ll go talk to them,” she said, avoiding his eye as she turned to venture back out into the pouring rain. She grazed his other shoulder and he hissed.

“Oh my God, I’m sorry,” she said, going motherly. Some blood had started to seep through his shirt.

“It’s fine,” he said, and edged past her into the room. “It’s not like we haven’t done it before.”

Her throat seized. She wasn’t sure if he meant the rescue or the bed. 

He sighed as he gingerly shucked his shirt, careful to avoid his wound. “Come on. It’s clean, it’s pissing rain out there, and it’s fucking two am.”

She stared out at the rain, water cascading down the street like a river. A line of trees swayed in the storm. It was coming down so hard that she couldn’t even see the mountains, save for when the lightning struck.

She closed the door.

“Do you need a hand?” she asked, pulling out the bandage dressings from the bag the woman at the front desk had given them.

He took the gauze and tape without looking at her. “No.”

The door to the bathroom shut. She sighed.

–

“Why did you break up with me?”

“You broke up with me first.”

“All we ever did was fight each other.”

“People fight all the time. It’s normal—”

He closed his eyes and sighed. She wanted to kiss him and hated herself for it.

That was the problem, they each wanted to be the most important thing in the other’s life. But that was part of the problem. Brick eclipsed everything, so much so that she couldn’t even see herself.

“We were poisoning each other. It was a tragedy in the making. We were a disaster.” 

_But we were together_.

This was the most contact they’d had since, probably. This was the closest they’d gotten to each other. Brick was less than a foot away from her and yet, staring at him, she felt impossibly lonely.

When they had been together she had always waited for him to be the first to say things, to express something, anything to her. She thought she had wanted to push him to be a better person. But maybe it had been because she was proud.

Well. Hard to feel proud here, laying in a bed with an ex who had at times felt like the best and worst thing that had ever happened to her, simultaneously. Hard to feel proud when not two minutes ago she had pressed her cheek to his back and wished, wished, wished.

“I miss you.”

It was like letting a little poison leave her.

She wondered if anyone else had ever seen this trick that still took her by surprise—Brick’s eyes widening imperceptibly, just before that hardness left them.

His jaw clenched a little when he swallowed, and his attention went to her hands, laying between them. He reached for them, and she let him trail his hand along her wrists, his touch reverential.

“I miss you, too.”

His hands wound themselves in hers, their foreheads touching. She could still smell the toothpaste on his breath, and then she was tasting it, the sharpness of mint that lingered in his mouth. Her hands pulled away from his to tangle in his hair, drawing his face closer so she could kiss him, hard.

His body felt familiar under her hands, and cotton was such a flimsy barrier, easy to shed, throw aside. He hissed a breath when she touched him, and she rolled over on top of him, her hair curtaining around them, and it was as if the rest of the world had disappeared.

She pressed her hips to his and delighted in his gritted teeth, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.

_You shouldn’t_ , her brain thought, dimly through the fog of lust and longing and pain. _We shouldn’t_.

_I don’t care_ , she thought back, always fighting herself. She could still remember the heartbreak. It was a pain she’d never forget. She didn’t want to lay here next to him and let it haunt her all night.

She fumbled for the nightstand drawer and the unexpected treasure it held, worrying for one panicked moment that she had missed one, that she had made a mistake and thrown the wrong ones away. But still she fumbled with the package, hands sweating too much to get a good enough grip to tear it. Brick took it from her and flipped her onto her back, and in the next instant it was on and he felt so familiar and right and perfect.

He stared down at her in a way that she had never seen enough, had always wanted more of. No anger or malice, just this look that made her feel like she was his entire world. It filled her heart so much, so much that she felt like it would burst with joy. She drew the covers up over their heads, and then he was doing that thing, that thing where he eclipsed the moon, the stars, the entire night sky. The entire universe. Brick eclipsed it all.

Their respective burdens stopped existing, all they could see was each other. Poison, he had called it. They kissed again and she drank it in. A river of it. She’d drink the entire polluted river tonight as long as they could be together.

They lay wrapped up in each other’s arms, pretending to be asleep. The covers had slipped past their shoulders as they slept.

She thought about how their last fight had ended, the one that had made him leave. He had told her that she made him want to destroy the whole world and everything in it, until all they had left was each other and there was no longer anything to fight about.

She had been horrified and had told him so and so he had left.

That was the problem. They each wanted to be the most important person in the other’s lives, above everything else—family, friends, the world. And neither of them had been willing to budge.

She stared at the line of his shoulder, rising and falling with his breath, for what felt like hours, but when she heard the rattle of the housekeeping cart, still several rooms down, time had seemed to pass so quickly.

She gave it a few more rooms, waiting to see if he would move.

“Brick,” she said, finally. The cart was two rooms away, now. They had to find the bus, or go home, whichever. They had to leave this room, this bed. She blinked back tears.

“Brick,” she said, a little louder now, because he hadn’t stirred. “We have to go.”

His arms tightened around her. She wondered how long he’d been awake.

“Wait,” he whispered, and it was the smallest sound she’d ever heard him make, in all the time they’d known each other.

She stared at that popcorn ceiling and thought about the things he had told her last night that he had never before said to her and might never say to her again. It clotted her throat.

“Not yet,” he said, his voice impossibly small as he squeezed her closer. “Not yet. Just… just a little longer.”

–

**(just a reds kiss scene I felt like writing. Started from the last line and worked outward (upward?) from that.)**

She must have plotted this. She’s too good at it for it to be anything else.

Every moment feels perfectly orchestrated, laser-guided to strike him where it hurts most, where it’ll have the strongest impact, do the most damage. The pressure of her lips on his, leading the rest of her body to follow suit. Her hand on the side of his neck, brushing the nape of it at just the right moment, twisting into his hair a moment later. The movement is slow, measured, just the right amount of hesitant to make her seem shy. The contact of his neck is what he remembers most later. Because as soon as she does that, he thinks, _I’m done for_. How completely, utterly done for.

His eyes close as Blossom kisses him. He doesn’t stop her. How can he?

How his nerves alight when she does that, sending a spark through him that renders him senseless, stupid. It isn’t fair that she can do this. It isn’t fighting fair.

How do you begin to parse this? He thinks, _I used to fight this girl. I used to level buildings to piss her off_. Used to, used to.

His brain doesn’t know what to do. Here she is, kissing him. If there’s one memory he could be buried with, he thinks this is it. When she reached for his hand, his neck, his mouth. 

She learned from an early age how to kill him with a kiss, and it still works.


End file.
